This is just personal therapy.
I don't use this account for anything to speak of, and nobody reads it, so it is a perfect place for me to flex a few brain muscles and see if I can get this moribund mentality of mine to come back to life.
When I was young I used to write long entries in my diaries practically every day, and I was working feverishly on fiction (and when even ( Read more... )
I guess everybody has to put up with some (or a lot) of that "mentality." Which is the most depressing thing about it. The other day I was watching an episode of "All In The Family" on Youtube just out of curiosity. Funny how a reactionary mentality that in the 60's was made fun of -- as a matter of course -- is now only slightly worse than the "default" one in the media. In fact, Archie Bunker was less abrasive (and wittier) than a lot of the folks around nowadays.
There's no point in arguing with people to whom facts are irrelevant. You can trounce them intellectually every time but they won't notice. I really do think there are two distinct ways of thinking (maybe more, but definitely two) -- those who base their ideas on information and are willing to alter their ideas based on new information, and those who are so emotionally dependent on whatever "facts" are floating about in their heads that they reject any effort to provide them with information as an attack on their very life and soul. I would very loosely and inaccurately characterize these as the "Enlightenment" and the "Medieval" mentalities. Probably most people are medieval in some corner or other of their heads, but at least try to be rational most of the time.
What am I talking about? I have no idea! Obviously, it's time to write a book! How does "False Intellectual Dichotomies Popularized" grab you as a title? I could pad this out to 300 pages and start a bestselling series like that "chicken soup" tripe! Hm, what food item would I have to crowbar into the title? "Are you a Chocolate or a Strawberry Cupcake of the Mind"?
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